#gwenno

[meddwlyngymraeg]

I'd love to hear some more happy sounding Welsh songs! can be any genre. also any songs about the sea! diolch!!

Shwmae! Amazingly, you are the literal target audience for Ynys' first album ('Ynys', 2022). Dylan Hughes is from Aberystwyth and spent many years in Cardiff and found himself longing for the seaside he grew up in, and when he finally started writing music as Ynys (he used to be in a cool indie psychedelic band called Race Horses too, if that's your thing), he put together a whole album only to realise how much of it is about the sea. I mean, his band is literally called Ynys (Island)!

Also, he has that wonderful, lush psychedelic pop sound, which I think sounds pretty happy musically, though there are definitely some themes of longing, being lost, culture and language, all that good stuff thrown in too. It's complex, but I still feel it's quite a happy listen!

So some songs from the album I'd recommend - Môr Du (Black Sea), Welcome to the Island (now technically this is an instrumental, don't know where that sits!), There's Nothing The Sea Doesn't Know.

My personal favourite off the album is Caneuon (‘Songs’, references the Gorky's Zygotic Mynci song 'Gegin Nos'—more on them in a sec—and also a pretty happy/reminiscing/wistful song), but the whole album is quite good, and their recent second album Dosbarth Nos also has some lovely songs that lift my mood at least— Aros Amdanat Ti, Gyda Ni, Dosbarth Nos. Also the sea references continue!

I'm linking their Bandcamp page rather than a Spotify because Dylan makes sure to include lyrics and translations on there (and in physical liner notes), if you or anyone else reading this was interested in going into the lyrics! (Also I usually feel like I should give people the option to directly support musicians if they feel inclined, where Spotify pays not even cents for most music.) But these two albums are on streaming if you'd like too!

I've also gotta recommend some Gorky's! Their 1997 album's called Barafundle, named after Barafundle Beach, and while I don't think any of the songs are directly about the sea itself (except like The Barafundle Bumbler, which uh. Your mileage may vary. It’s about a voyeur bloke that sits by the seaside on said beach), but there's Diamond Dew which is such a lovely tune, and while not about the sea, Patio Song (i.e. everyone's favourite Gorky's song) has that lovely outro of 'it is raining, so take my hand, the winter's so long, it takes so much of the earth'. ☔️🌧🌈 Happy music, some of Gorky's work! (Personal fave off the album: Starmoonsun <3)

(Also this song's in English but since we're talking about Gorky's I can't not recommend Spanish Dance Troupe. Gorgeous song.)

There's also the super cool Adwaith, who wrote the song Lan Y Môr. This song is actually a lot older than the album it ended up on, 2022's Welsh Music Prize winning Bato Mato, Adwaith are still the only musicians to win the Prize twice. They wrote the song and released it as a single back in early 2020 and it was following a run of really cool punky Cymraeg singles. Love Adwaith, they're quite cool.

Edit: HOW COULD I HAVE FORGOTTEN. The queen of the beaches. Gwenno herself. I guess I hadn’t included her because this isn’t technically a Welsh language album (save for one song, N.Y.C.A.W. (Nid Yw Cymru Ar Werth)). Gwenno is half-Welsh, half-Cornish, and this album was basically written down at St. Ives. This does sound like it, and I love this song Anima!

Hope you like these! People can totally feel free to add on in the notes if I’ve missed something!

[mariemariemaria]

Some of my favourite albums this year 💕

Headstrong (Heisk) / Unreal Unearth (Hozier) / The Returner (Alison Russell) / The Fool in Her Wedding Gown (The Crane Wives) / Fáilte Isteach (Imlé) / The Táin (Horslips) / Y Dydd Olaf (Gwenno) / Name Your Sorrow (Pillow Queens) / Nonante-Cinq (Angèle)

[0162-tuu]

Fatel a-genes?
Daras igerys
Skeus howl an gwav war leur lowarth
Awel dre'n fenestr
Ha mi, ha mi, ha mi, ha mi, 
war ben ow honan

How are you?
The door is open 
and the shadow of the afternoon hits the garden floor 
a breeze through the window
and I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, 
All alone.

[nonenglishsongs]

Gwenno - Tir Ha mor (Cornish)

[wiratomkinder]

The door is open and the shadow of the afternoon hits the garden floor

[sloshed-cinema]

Enys Men (2022)

Apparently there are exceptions to that old adage that no man is an island. Enys Men unfolds as a surreal enigma, often entrancingly hypnotic but occasionally overindulgent. Patterns and repetition are baked into the film’s bedrock. We begin our understanding of life on this island as an endless cycle of identical days, the unnamed Volunteer recording soil temperatures and noting no changes in the flowers she observes, starting up her generator, dropping rocks into a pit, and reading the ecological isolationist think-piece A Blueprint for Survival. The camera cuts metronomically, passively noting small details of the island and her hut. Small queries begin to emerge: why those specific flowers? Why the rock? For what purpose is her work? 1 May becomes an important date, overheard first on the radio (giving a date about a week in the future) but also featured on memorial placards. The number seven appears on her tea tin and in the number of flowers in the cluster she studies. Strange deviations float to the surface in the form of the strange craggy monolith near the Volunteer’s hut and a plank from a ship she finds on the cliffs. It’s eerie and unsettling, but to what purpose.

A break point comes when the Volunteer questions her surroundings for the first time, venturing out in the dark to ask who is singing. The world fractures into a Lynchian nightmare, the Volunteer pulled violently back into her abode, her body vibrating as if she were trapped in the Black Lodge. Nothing is the same from this point onward. Echoes of the past become rendered flesh which were initially just sounds and echoes of ships and mining equipment, whatever the past of the island held coming to the present. Miners grin in the dark. Doomed sailors appear outside when a Boatman comes to replenish the Volunteer’s supplies on a boat bearing the same name as that doomed vessel of some decades ago. The Volunteer is perhaps the vessel of all of this, at once bound to this purgatorial existence and embodying the Stone Island itself. She shares the vibrant red and white colors of the flowers, and the wound slashing across her abdomen grows the lichen which the monolith and the flowers both grow. That wound matches the one of the younger girl we observe. Perhaps this is the Volunteer as a younger woman, or perhaps it’s another woman. It doesn’t matter, really, this woman’s identity subsumed by the island she records and roves. She is its witness. Sailors lost in a tragedy and children singing folk tunes and maids in aprons—always seven—act out the events of the past as her hut becomes overgrown and repaired. Life and permanence and transience are intertwined. We constantly cut to closeups of the Volunteer’s face, intertwining our experience as an audience with her gaze. Now. Does every lichen appearance need a goofy noise sting? Do we need quite that many optical zooms? Does it venture into cornball territory at points? Oh yes. More damagingly, the balance between ambiguity and overemphasizing patterns comes under threat at a few times: you don’t need a closeup of the SEVEN on the tin; just let people get curious and start counting. But it is nice to experience a film that isn’t interested in leading you by the hand to all of the answers, simply content and confident enough to allow the viewer to make connections on their own.

THE RULES

SIP

A rock goes down the well.

Seven of anything appears onscreen at the same time.

Nudity.

More than one Volunteer in a scene.

Someone speaks on the radio.

BIG DRINK

JUMP SCARE MOMENT

That absolute banger “Kan Me” starts to figure into a scene.

[thedaysofdisorder]

Gwenno - An Stevel Nowydh Tresor (2022)

[zonetrente-trois]

[sunless-not-sinless]

16 22 :33

16: one of ya fav classical songs

twinkle twinkle little star >:3. nah tbh paganini's caprice 24 (ik its a basic choice 😭) goes hard. and i grew up on jonathon creek so i physically cannot mention the danse macabre. no matter how much i prefer caprice 24, i cant not also mention the danse macabre

.

22: song that moves ya forward

hmmm. despite my recent punk rock phase, its probably gotta be one of odie leigh's. idk what's with them, they just are hella good at pushing me forward yknow? hmmmmmm. out of all of hers i guess id choose habits held. idk why. it just. it just. yknow?

with an honourable mention to ardamm by gwenno. fucking incredible (if you can speak cornish ofc - mara ty a yl kernowek kewsel, heb mar)

[chloemphoto]

[poppedmusic]

Festival Review: Deer Shed 2023

Words: Elena Katrina Deer Shed Festival – North Yorkshire – 28th-30th July 2023Instagram//Lineup//2024 TICKETS Now in its 13th year, Deer Shed made its return to its home in Baldersby Park, North Yorkshire. Not only a music festival but one that really and truly looks after everyone. I can really attest to this on a very personal level. I’ve not been to a festival for 4 years. 2019 I was a very…

[olaskoolkitchen]

Ola's Kool Kitchen podcast 479 with sonic spring blooms from Gwenno, Crystal Eyes, Arts Fishing Club, Real Ones, LIFE, Kikagaku Moyo, Automatic and Barrie.

[amp-mod]

Tir Ha Mor by Gwenno

[aeolianblues]

I’ve brought home some of my CDs with me, and dad has a CD player in his car so I’ve been giving him one a week (I’ve only been home a week) to listen to. Romance has sadly not worked on him, on the strength of four songs—he’s made it to Desire—it’s ’too slow’ for him. Sad.

No Inhaler CDs on hand, soz. Take your pick, he listens to your pick for the next week

[quatregats]

This whole album is so so good